Poolside Courage

The late June sun beat down on the cracked concrete of the Hendersons' backyard pool, turning the water into something that looked almost too blue to be real. I slumped in a plastic chair, my dead iphone clutched in my hand like evidence from a crime scene.

"Bro, you look like you're at a funeral," Marcus said, sliding into the chair beside me. He nodded toward my phone. "That's been dead for two hours. Let it go."

"Easy for you to say," I muttered. "You're not the one who missed her text because your ancient iphone battery decided to peace out at 2 PM."

Chloe. The girl I'd been lowkey obsessing over since May, whose string bikini sat two chairs away, currently laughing at something Jake—the absolute human embodiment of everything I wasn't—was saying. Jake, with his perfect hair and his iphone 15 Pro Max and his effortless way of existing.

"There's a literal party happening," Marcus pointed out. "People are jumping off the roof into the pool. Live a little."

Across the yard, Mr. Henderson's prize mechanical bull sat dormant like some rejected rodeo prop. His daughter Emma had convinced him to bring it out for the party, but nobody had actually used it yet. The sight of it sparked something reckless in my chest.

"Dude," I said, standing up. "Watch my phone."

"What are you—"

I marched straight toward the mechanical bull. "Yo, Emma! This thing actually work?"

She looked up, surprised. "Yeah? Nobody's brave enough though."

"Watch this."

I swung my leg over the bull's back, gripping the rope handle. Someone cranked the settings. Beginner, my foot—this thing started bucking like it had something to prove. The yard went quiet. Then cheering.

My arms burned. The bull spun and jerked. I lasted eight seconds before flying off, directly into the pool.

When I surfaced, sputtering and drenched, the backyard erupted. And there was Chloe, standing at the pool's edge, actually looking at me instead of Jake, grinning like I'd just done something legendary instead of absolutely ridiculous.

"That was insane," she said, extending a hand to pull me out. "I'm Chloe, by the way."

"Jamie," I said, water dripping from my nose, my dead iphone forgotten somewhere in a plastic chair. "Yeah. I know."

She laughed. And for the first time all summer, something felt exactly right.